But the streets were finished with him yet. A masked gunman walked up and opened fire as Montoya talked with friends on the corner of 17th Street and Wolcott Avenue, outside a birthday party for his brother early Sunday, according to police and relatives.

"We're out here celebrating, just having a good time. Next thing you know, there's somebody with a hooded mask running up on us," Michelangelo Escarzaga-Garcia said as he stood outside a web of police tape.

Escarzaga-Garcia said he yelled, "Watch out!" and ducked inside the home's front gate.

Shots rang out and Montoya lay on the ground with wounds to the arm and chest.

Escarzaga-Garcia said he and friends rushed applied pressure to the wounds and tried to keep him awake until an ambulance arrived. Montoya was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, police said.

Montoya's 25-year-old sister, Alvia Montoya, stood on a stoop about 15 yards from where her brother was shot and fought back tears as she described the chaotic scene. "I didn't even hear the gunshots," she said. "I don't know what happened. They're telling me my brother got shot, and I'm like, what?"

Her 7-year-old daughter, a blanket draped over her shoulders, briefly poked her head from behind her mother's legs before ducking back out of sight. Alvia Montoya said her daughter was confused by the commotion and she tried to shelter her.

Montoya's sister and friend said he wasn't active in a gang, though a police source said a 2010 arrest report linked him to a gang. Montoya survived a previous shooting that wounded him in the arm near Damen and 17th Street.

Escarzaga-Garcia said at least three gangs are active in the area. Damen Avenue acts as border and rival gangs use 17th Street – wide without speed-bumps -- to travel into rival territory, he said.

"Things are happening to anybody," Escarzaga-Garcia said. "I'm glad everybody else is safe, and I pray that my friend comes out okay."

A judge entered a not guilty plea Tuesday for a suspended Broward Sheriff's deputy accused of shooting a man in the leg during an off-duty confrontation at the Hollywood home the victim shared with his girlfriend.